The Military Minute: Violence is Down Significantly in Iraq, But Who Would Know It?

A U.S. military official announced the other day that the number of daily attacks in Iraq have dropped nearly 95% since last year. A year ago, Iraq suffered approximately 180 attacks per day. Today, that number is down to about 10. Has this even been reported in the news? The mainstream media surely doesn't care to report this information, most likely because it thrives on negative news. But God forbid that any positive stories coming out of Iraq are credited to the Bush Administration as doing something right or help sway public opinion on the prosecution of the war. You see, the mainstream media has an agenda, which is not to fairly and objectively report the news. This agenda is to accentuate the bad in hopes that the public believes the war is going horribly, that our government callously and purposely desires to see our servicemen and women, not to mention innocent Iraqis, killed, and frankly to make a Republican administration look bad. I often wonder what the coverage would be like if President Clinton were still President or, after seeing how the media acted during the most recent election, if Barack Obama was President, assuming all other things remained the same.

We live in a time where news is essentially live feed, 24/7, around the world. It's largely unfiltered except by the mainstream media. When there's an agenda behind reporting the news, it can be distorted. This applies equally to negative news that is put in a positive light. This is usually called propaganda. For instance, during World War II, there were many battles that the United States and the allies lost and where thousands of men died sometimes due to mistakes made by inexperienced officers or split-second decisions made on the battlefield that turned out to be disastrous. However, the American public did not hear about it on the radio in real time. In fact, weeks would go by before stories were reported in the newspapers. Millions of Americans packed movie theaters to see newsreels about the war, many of which were censored by the U.S. military and produced to show the U.S. and it's allies in a positive light. Was this propaganda? I am sure some of it was, but did it help us win the war? I would say resoundingly, “Yes!”

Here's a chart which reflects the publics' opinion of the war and President Roosevelt's handling of the war from 1941 through 1945.

Click on image to view larger size

Despite the many setbacks and mistakes made by the United States, both militarily and politically, during the war, President Roosevelt's approval rating on his handling of the war never dropped below the high 60s. Why was this? My opinion is that the American people supported President Roosevelt and the war because there wasn't a relentless daily drubbing of negative news and attacks by the media. Likewise, Hollywood production companies patriotically worked with our government to produce newsreels that accurately portrayed the battles we fought, yet put a positive spin on them so as to leave the viewer feeling that we, as a country, were persevering and going to win the war. This is opposed to today's mainstream media reports that leave viewers feeling that we are failing, we can't win the war and that nothing we do is right. Does it surprise anyone why the war and President Bush's war approval ratings are so low?

Look, it's clear that we have made mistakes in the prosecution of the Iraq war. Tell me a war where no mistakes are ever made. However, we, as Americans, need to stop listening to the pundits and the mainstream media's negative dribble and educate ourselves as to what we are really doing abroad. It might surprise you.